We are finally ready to begin our statewide handwashing intervention with the help and support of county environmental health specialists statewide!  After finding handwashing to be the #1 out of compliance item statewide during the Oregon Baseline Study in 2002, the DHS Foodborne Illness Prevention Program decided to make improving handwashing statewide an active part of our existing program goals.  Focus groups shed light on the issues food service workers and managers perceived to be barriers to handwashing in their facilities.  Some items were addressed in rule change, like restoring missing soap and paper towels at a designated handsink as a critical violation.  Others, such as creating a meaningful approach to target food service workers took more time for the research and focus group testing. 

Using funding from the CDC EHS-Net program grant, professional social marketers and graphic artists were hired to create an intervention targeting food service workers to impact their behavior regarding handwashing.  This endeavor, called the Handwashing Legends Project (HLP), involves spreading a meaningful story about the consequences of poor handwashing to each licensed restaurant in Oregon.  The success of this intervention depends on inspectors providing an illustration telling a true story of a handwashing-related outbreak to each operator during their routine inspection, along with some discussion about the importance of handwashing to prevent foodborne illness.

After spreading the message from July 1 to December 31, 2007 all inspectors will be given a second illustration with a new story to post in each facility.  This Phase 2 will be from January 1 to June 30, 2008.  When all the facilities have had the two consecutive illustrations posted in their business for a year, we will draw a random sampling of restaurants to use for our follow-up statewide Baseline Study.  Upon completion of this second Baseline, we will be able to see if there is a measurable increase in proper handwashing statewide.  Because this is such an innovative project, we plan to prepare an article for publication, as well as sharing our results with all other interested states and the Food and Drug Administration.

Please call Erica Van Ess at 971-673-0446 with any questions about the project and its implementation!

• Phase 1 Illustration in English, Spanish, Chinese Simplified*, and Chinese Traditional*.
• Phase 1 Implementation Letter to Counties
• Phase 1 Original Story and References

• Phase 2 Illustration in English and Spanish
• Phase 2 Implementation Letter to Counties
• Phase 2 Original Story and References

• Oregon's Baseline Report

*Thank you to Tak (Sam) Ho and his son, David Ho of OM Seafood Co & Restaurant in Portland, OR for providing these Chinese translations free-of-charge and to Multnomah County Environmental Health for facilitating the translation to help spread the message.

Thank you to BehaviorWorks and HappyLucky of Portland for their help in creating and designing our illustrations!

Funding: EHSNET, EHSB, NCEH, CDC